Update on legal challenge opposing HALEU

As provided by Beyond Nuclear's legal counsel, Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio:

The lawsuit -- a petition for review pending in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, involves a challenge to the adequacy of the NRC's analysis and disclosure of the HALEU project. Centrus Corporation, created by the US Congress after the bankruptcy of the uranium enrichment firm USEC at the Piketon, Ohio site (PORTS, formerly called the  Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Site), received a $115M contract from U.S. DOE in 2020 to demonstrate the manufacture of high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, which NRC and DOE maintain is the nuclear fuel of the future, to be used in several different designs of advanced nuclear reactors, aka small modular reactors (SMRs).

HALEU poses problems. Some of the planned new generation of reactors require intensively enriched uranium-235 in order to fission adequately to produce sufficient heat to produce steam to turn an electricity generator. While the current generation of reactors requires a uranium fuel with a concentration of 2-3% U-235, SMRs will be designed to require a 19.75% concentration. The NRC license granted to Centrus to install centrifuges to enrich uranium fuel to that level allows fluctuations as high as a 25% concentration. Any nuclear fuel enriched at 20% or more is classified as "highly-enriched uranium", or HEU, and technically can be used as the explosive core material in a thermonuclear bomb. That means that HALEU could be desirable to thieves or weapons traffickers. The additional effort needed to enrich 20% HALEU to 90% HEU is comparatively little.

   

As a comparison, Iran's controversial nuclear fuel enrichment program has been enriching fuel to about 5% U-235, yet Iran is accused of maintaining a bomb-making process and has to submit to international inspectors. But the U.S. government intends to enrich to roughly 20% or more concentrations without requiring sophisticated inventorying of the volume of fuel created to prevent theft, nor special security measures.

Beyond Nuclear and the Ohio Nuclear-Free Network claim that the environmental assessment written by the NRC neither mentions the weapons proliferation potential of diverted HALEU and so does not evaluate in any way what the prospects are, nor is the new fuel examined from the standpoint of being classified as HEU, which should subject to to international treaty obligations requiring greater security and accountability safeguards. If the court finds in BN/ONFN's favor, it could require the NRC to prepare and publish an environmental impact statement covering these objections in detail and the public would be informed of the potential for weapons trafficking/proliferation of weapons material, as well as the additional environmental impacts caused to Americans living near or working in the expanded U.S. uranium mining and extraction that would be caused by a new generation of nuclear reactors.

BN/ONFN files its brief on March 14, NRC responds in mid April, BN/ONFN files a reply brief at end of April, and some months later there will be oral argument and a decision.

People's Response to RFI, DOE Request for Information re HALEU availability program

As submitted by legal counsel Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio, to the U.S. Department of Energy, on behalf of a coalition of 48 organizations, including Beyond Nuclear:

To rfi-haleu, Daniel Vega, and Michael Reim:

Please see attached [linked here] Response to RFI, DOE “Request for Information (RFI) Regarding Planning for Establishment of a Program To Support the Availability of High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) for Civilian Domestic Research, Development, Demonstration, and Commercial Use.”

Thank you.

Terry J. Lodge, Esq.

The new Australia, UK, and US nuclear submarine announcement: a terrible decision for the nonproliferation regime

As reported in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Beyond Nuclear on Sputnik Radio News "Political Misfits"

Here is the write up:

Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste watchdog at Beyond Nuclear, joins us to talk about a recent report published by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) revealing that nuclear weapons spending increased by $1.4 billion more than in 2019, with nine countries spending 72.6 billion dollars on nukes, who the biggest offenders were, and how much money is spent on think tanks and lobbying by the nuclear weapons business. We also talk about the parallels between the nuclear weapons lobby and the nuclear energy lobby, and how the Biden administration is going ahead with an expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Listen to the audio recording, here. (Kevin's interview begins at the 17 minute 12 second mark, and ends at the 33 minute mark.)

Beyond Nuclear is a member organization of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. ANA is a national network of three-dozen grassroots groups, watchdogs of the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex sites. Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps serves on the ANA board of directors.

HALEU IN PORTSMOUTH, OH? Nuclear weapons proliferation and other grave risks!

U.S. Department of Energy info. graphic on HALEU. For legible size, see link in web post.The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is poised to forego a more comprehensive National Environmental Policy Act review of American Centrifuge Plant/Centrus's scheme to generate High Assay Low Enriched Uranium in Portsmouth, OH, containing up to nearly 20% Uranium-235, considered weapons-grade. This HALEU "demonstration" is intended for use in so-called Small Modular Reactors or other "advanced" designs, by both the military and commercial nuclear power industry, both domestically and overseas. However, Tom Clements of Savannah River Site Watch alerted Ohio Nuclear Free Network legal counsel Terry Lodge of Toledo, who, along with 104 endorsing groups, has demanded NRC undertake a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, to address the scheme's grave proliferation, security, safety, health, and environmental risks.

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